“About Mom,” he said, thinking of Maya in her hospital bed. “You really think she’s never going to wake up?”
The regret on Gabriel’s face was palpable. “I really don’t think she will, Isaac.”
Isaac sat back, contemplating this. For the first time, he allowed himself to consider the possibility that maybe he’d been grieving her all along, that maybe, just like everything else in his family, he could not let her go.
And then something stirred in his peripheral vision.
“Hello?” He rose to his feet.
It stirred again, and he walked toward it, Gabriel following a step behind him. The moment they cleared the underbrush, Isaac understood.
The buds that hung above the Sullivan altar were blooming, terrible pulsating flowers in the shape of hands unfurling one by one.
And Isaac’s newfound hope slipped away from him just as easily as the strands of smoke billowed from the flowers, iridescent flecks glimmering, and rose above the trees.
Violet was on watch in the spire when the attack came. She had been fretting about the letter she’d found, turning it over and over again in her mind as she tapped aimlessly at her phone. But a sudden noise made her bolt upright, her phone sliding carelessly off her lap and onto the attic floor. Beside her, Orpheus rose to his feet, mewling urgently. The red string around his ear twitched.
“Yeah, I know,” Violet said, staring at the same place he was.
Roots surged from inside the circle a moment later, destroying the founders’ symbol that had been painted inside.
She’d known this attack would come, but she hadn’t anticipated it being such an aggressive assault. The roots wriggled across the floorboards more quickly than Violet could blink. Several strands clawed for purchase against the walls, tugging down the velvet curtains that shielded the windows. In the center of the circle, the roots grew, saplings sprouting from them that were utterly laden with those disgusting handlike buds. The smell made Violet’s eyes water.
“Gross,” Violet muttered as her sneaker made contact with a puddle of silver goo leaking from the roots. She knelt down and pressed her palm against the iridescence, bracing herself as a familiar tether opened in the back of her mind.
“Don’t even try it,” she said, her hands outstretched, staring at the copse of trees attempting to invade her attic. Her home. Orpheus brushed reassuringly against her legs, hissing at the saplings as they shrank back against the wall.
The tether in her mind shivered and whined. Violet had noticed the sound before, but for the first time, she heard something else behind it. A voice, murmuring words she could not understand. But it wasn’t the words that mattered; it was the tone. It was unmistakably human.
“I don’t understand,” she whispered. The saplings shifted and writhed, and for a split second she saw human bodies in the creases of their strange gray bark, arms and necks and torsos twisted in agony. The whining in the back of her mind intensified, shrill and panicked, and a tear brimmed in the corner of her eye. Violet knew it would be iridescent, just like the corruption.
Why was this happening so quickly? What had changed? Violet struggled to claw back her panic as the buds began to unfurl, smoke drifting from them and swirling together into a tiny tornado in the center of the spire.
Violet breathed in deeply, felt the rush of her power coursing through her. She tugged on this tether that she had not asked for, these powers she still did not fully understand, and with everything she had, she willed it all to stop.
That was how Juniper and Harper found her: arms outstretched, breathing heavily, sweat dripping from her brow as she held the corruption in place.
“It isn’t going to work,” she told them both, her mind spinning, the trees moving in and out of focus. The voices were growing; first there had been one, then three, and now there was an entire chorus, whimpering like dying animals in the back of her head. “When I stop…”
“It’ll spread,” Juniper finished gently. “But you can’t hold it forever, Violet. You have to let it go.”
“No.”
“I can help.” Harper appeared beside her. There was a ferocious look on her face. She knelt down, exhaled, and reached into the circle, closing her hand around a root.
Immediately, stone spread from her fingers. It snaked along the roots and up the saplings that had sprouted from them, petrifying the open buds into a dozen tiny, grotesque statues. When she stepped back, the entire thing was still and the screaming tether in Violet’s head had shrunk to a whisper.
“Thank you,” Violet said hoarsely, relief coursing through her as she collapsed to her knees, shuddering. The buds had released gray mist into the room, but it was already dissipating. Violet hoped their founder immunity would hold against this new development of the disease.
“No, thank you,” Harper said. “You held it back.”
“You stopped it.” Violet grinned at her. “You got control of your powers!”
But Harper wasn’t smiling back. “Not forever.”
Already, Violet could see silver veins beginning to appear beneath the coating of red-brown stone.
“Oh,” she whispered, dread coursing through her. “Oh no.”
“It’ll hold for at least a day, I think,” Harper said. “But it’s just temporary. The spire…”
“It’s falling.”
“Yeah.”
Juniper had to help Violet back down the ladder. She didn’t want to leave the corruption behind, but even she could admit that she needed to rest. Back in the living room, she wrapped a blanket around her shoulders and sipped anxiously from a hot mug of tea as Harper stared at her phone screen. Juniper had stayed behind to barricade the trapdoor.
“It’s not just us,” Harper said grimly. “Something’s happening at the Hawthorne house. And the Sullivan ruins.”
“Shit!” Violet groaned and tugged her blanket more tightly around her shoulders, shivering. “We have to go. We have to try to stop it—”
“We can’t possibly be in three places at once.” Harper’s voice was gentle but firm. “Sit. Drink your tea.”
Violet frowned at her. “Since when did you get so bossy?”
“I have four younger siblings,” Harper said wryly. “I’ve always been bossy.”
Harper’s phone began to buzz, and her eyes widened. Violet leaned over, saw the name flashing on the screen, and choked back an incredulous laugh.
“You have Justin Hawthorne listed in your phone as Ugh?”
“You knew it was him, didn’t you?” Harper asked, tapping the screen. A moment later his voice sounded through the speakers, crackly but clear.
“Harper?” he said.
“I’m here. What’s going on?”
“I’m at the lake; I ran here—not important. The point is that the corruption is spreading here.”
“What?”
“It’s going to—it’s—” He let out a panicked yell, and the call cut out abruptly.
“Justin?” Harper tapped frantically at her phone. “Justin! Are you kidding me? I’m going to kill him.”
Again, Violet felt her own panic creeping up in her chest. If another ritual site was falling so close to this one, if those buds were unfurling, something had gone terribly wrong. An airborne strand of the corruption meant that anyone who breathed it in would get sick. They’d contained it in her attic, but if those flowers bloomed at the lake…